Jeff Bezos used to mandate an empty chair at Amazon meetings to represent the customer, and keep them as the focus in decision-making. Besides this, he is known for other non-conventional management decisions, such as his preference for ‘two pizza’ teams and memos over PPT presentations.

Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos, 60, has long made the news about his unusual requirements from employees, and this time, another source revealed that the multi-billionaire always ensured that a chair was kept empty during all meetings.

The reason? To represent end-customers at the table, as per a report by Unilad Tech.

The ‘Empty Chair Theory’

Dubbed the ‘Empty Chair Theory,’ the report noted, citing insiders, that Bezos mandated that a spare chair be available at all Amazon meetings to represent the “most important person” when making business decisions — the customer.

“One problem is that the customer isn’t really there at every meeting. So what we like to do at every meeting is we reserve a seat for the customer,” another source told Inc in 2018 when speaking about the practice.

The ‘Two Pizza Rule’

The report also noted that from the early days of Amazon, which was founded in 1994, Bezos mandated that teams have fewer than 10 people — or be small enough to share two pizzas.

The guiding thought behind this was that “too many cooks spoil the broth” and to “minimize lines of communication and decrease bureaucracy overheads during decision-making”.

The ‘No PPT Rule’

Earlier in 2019, insiders shared a memo from Bezos, which termed the company’s decision to do away with slides and PowerPoint-style tools at the company as the “smartest thing we ever did”.

“We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of ‘study hall,” Bezos wrote in his annual letter to Amazon shareholders in 2018.

Even though the exact date for his dismissal of PowerPoint presentations in the boardroom is not known yet, Bezos’ memo hinted, “Many, many years ago, we outlawed PowerPoint presentations at Amazon … and it’s probably the smartest thing we ever did.”

For Bezos, PowerPoints often fail to convey enough information and are susceptible to audience interruptions. A narratively structured memo, in contrast, allows one to communicate thoughts more effectively, he opined.